


S.O.S.

by vixalicious



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-24
Updated: 2004-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:01:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vixalicious/pseuds/vixalicious





	S.O.S.

She sits in the restaurant, a still force surrounded by chaos. Conversations buzz in her ears, glasses clink, forks scrape, children cry. Loud laughter blends in with whispered arguing. The commotion of everything that is outside of her spins around and around her like clothes spinning in a tumble dryer, mixing and moving until she can’t tell one from the other and she can’t look away. It makes her want to shrink inside herself, away from the noise, away from the people, away from the sheer **life** of the moment, shrink into a tiny shell of her former self. A quiet cave. Someplace that is dark and slightly damp and, above all, quiet.

It catches her eye, a fluorescent, ugly-as-sin light fixture, in the middle of the room. Pulls her out of the cave, out of the dark, but not out of the quiet. It is flashing... on, off, on, on, off, on, off. Like the light had a pulse or a heartbeat. Or a message, maybe in Morse code, a signal meant only for her to see.

_S.O.S, S.O.S_ , she thinks, _save our ship, save our souls, save us._

_Oh, god, save me._

~*~

She looks at the man sitting across from her, and thinks ‘I could drive this steak knife through your throat and you’d be dead in seconds.’ Instead, she laughs at his stupid joke and strokes her hand down his forearm in a flirtatious manner.

It is not the first time she’s walked away from temptation. Two days ago, standing the train platform, she listened to woman who was chatting with a friend, laughing like a hyena as she recounted the misfortune of a mutual acquaintance. She looked at the woman, and thought ‘I could push you, push you right off this platform and into the oncoming path of that train. And who would miss you?’ Instead, she bought a coffee from the vendor and sat quietly waiting for her train. 

Last month, she had sat in her exit row seat on a plane high above the Atlantic Ocean, as someone’s child screamed at the top of its lungs, and her seatmate elbowed her in the ribs for the twenty-seventh time, and the stewardess said “I’m-sorry-we’re-all-out-of-the-chicken-  
would-you-like-the-liver-and-onions-I’m-sorry-there’s-nothing-I-can-do,” and the toddler behind her kicked her chair, and the plane began jumping up and down in the turbulent sky. She looked around at the mass of annoying humanity trapped together in an airborne tin can and thought, ‘I could open this window. I could pull the handle, and everyone would get sucked out and the plane would crash and we would all die.’ Instead, she buried her nose in her book and politely declined her complimentary meal.

As she sips her coffee and pretends to listen to her insipid date drone on and on, she watches the flickering light, and wonders if it really could be a message for her. A missive, a chance to break free of the drudgery of the day-to-day and do something really daring. A spy mission, a crime spree, an adventure. It doesn’t matter if she’s on the side of good or evil, breaking the law or providing protection. Anything will do, anything that takes her away from the unimaginative restaurant she’s eating in, the boring man she’s dating, the hard chair she’s sitting in, the horrible clothes she’s wearing, and the unspeakable thoughts that run through her head.

~*~

The light flashes, then holds, steady as if it had never wavered. She finds herself holding her breath as her date continues his monologue, wondering if the moment is gone, if the missive has ended and she failed to transcribe the message. Her mind flails; why didn’t she write it down, does she even have a pen with her, was that short-short-long or short-long-long?

The blinking begins anew and her breath leaves her, deflating her spirit along with her lungs until she wonders how she has the strength to hold her head up. She feels like this is it, her last chance, her grab at the brass ring. If only she knew how to go about it. If only her life didn’t feel like a heavy, algae-covered anchor, binding her in seaweed and chains and dragging her down to the deep, cold abyss. 

She watches the flash-pause-flash, and thinks again, _save me. Or just tell me how to save myself, because I don’t know and I can’t think and I am drowning in this maelstrom of tedium._

The light flickers once more, then goes out, leaving a soul surrounded by darkness and another chance at redemption lost.


End file.
